Howard Glennerster, British Social Policy since 1945. Second edition. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Hardback £55.00, paperback £15.99, xi+260 pp.

Janie Percy-Smith (ed.) Policy Responses to Social Exclusion. Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000. Hardback £55.00, paperback £17.99, viii+244 pp.

Peter Taylor-Gooby (ed.), Risk, Trust and Welfare. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 2000. £16.99, xv+240 pp.

Exactly fifty years ago Richard Titmuss delivered his inaugural lecture as Professor of Social Administration at the London School of Economics, the first such appointment in any British University. His influence was considerable. As Wilding (1995:149) notes,

More than anyone else, Titmuss established social administration as a subject of academic study and as a worthwhile intellectual activity. He exerted an enormous influence on the subject in its formative academic years, and a more than marginal influence on the development of social policy in the world outside the academy.